Annan leaves behind commitment to battle poverty

Posted: Sunday, December 31, 2006

UNITED NATIONS - Kofi Annan steps down as secretary-general at midnight tonight, leaving behind a global organization far more aggressively engaged in peacekeeping and fighting poverty - but struggling to restore its tarnished reputation.

Taking office six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Annan helped preside over a decade that saw the world unite against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then divide deeply over the U.S.-led war against Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

At a Millennium Summit in September 2000, he spurred world leaders to adopt a blueprint to wage a global war on poverty and bring the United Nations into the 21st century.

Five years later, he called a follow-up summit to mark the United Nation's 60th anniversary. Hoping to complete the bold changes, he sought to promote development, ensure international security and end human rights abuses. History's largest gathering of world leaders took a first step, but it fell far short.

Unlike the upbeat atmosphere at the dawn of the new millennium, the World Summit in 2005 took place after a year of almost daily attacks on the United Nations over allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, bribery by U.N. purchasing officials and widespread sex abuse by U.N. peacekeepers.

World leaders agreed to create an internal ethics office but they did not give Annan the authority to make sweeping management changes. The major overhaul of the U.N.'s outdated management practices and operating procedures will be left to Annan's successor, Ban Ki-moon, who takes over Jan. 1.

In what was considered a major summit achievement, world leaders pledged to protect civilians from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing - but before stepping down earlier this month U.N. humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland accused leaders of failure to translate their pledge into action, especially in Sudan's Darfur region, Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

At a farewell news conference earlier this month, Annan said he considered his top achievements the promotion of human rights, fighting to close the gap between extreme poverty and immense wealth and the U.N.'s campaign to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases.

Under Annan, U.N. peacekeeping has expanded with nearly 80,000 U.N. troops and international police currently deployed from Africa and the Mideast to Kosovo, Haiti and East Timor.

Annan's first five-year term culminated in 2001 with the Nobel Peace Prize - shared with the United Nations - for "their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." Annan himself was lauded for "bringing new life to the organization."

But Annan's second five-year term was not without shadows. An investigation led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing corruption in the $64 billion oil-for-food program to go on for years.